Night and Day
by dhawthorne
Summary: Night and Day fanfic. Ruth reflects on her feelings for Jacob Milne. Spoilers for the play.


Night and Day

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I don't own Tom Stoppard's play "Night and Day". Lines in quotation marks are from the play. I also don't own the song "The Lady is a Tramp". Please read and review.

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Jacob Milne, the Journalist (with a capital J), the one who had quit the _Grimsby Evening Messenger_ after refusing to appeal to the Union in the wake of the provincial reporters' strike, had gotten under her skin. She was attracted to him, quite the opposite of what she felt for Dick Wagner, whom she had gone to bed with while she was in London. She wasn't attracted to him at all, had only gone to bed with him because there was no danger of her going to bed with him again. And when he showed up at her house in Kambawe, she told him as much.

Jacob was... different.

She had stayed up and waited for his return – she had missed him. And while he was rambling on about everything and nothing, all she could think was "why don't you shut up and kiss me."

He demurred.

"It isn't that I don't think you're attractive," he said.

"No," she replied. "It's just that Geoffrey has been damned decent to you..."

"Well, yes," he admitted. "And even if he hadn't..."

"It wouldn't be right to make free with his possessions – his ox, his ass, his wife – "she had finished his sentence for him.

He had explained his reasons for not "indulging in his desire for her", claiming that he would make use of Geoffrey's possessions, but if he made love to Ruth, it would be as though he thought of her as a possession.

"As it is, it seems I regard a wife as different from a jeep, which puts me in the forefront of enlightened thinking." He smiled. "Wouldn't you say?"

"What desire for me?" Ruth asked him.

He admitted to fantasising about her, making love to her in a kind of "parallel universe," where there existed no night and no day, no responsibilities...

"You were _good_..." she said.

She admitted to being a tart with her first husband. She admitted that she was almost a tart once with Geoffrey, but as it "\was in a hotel room, 'hotel rooms shouldn't count as infidelity. They constitute a separate moral universe."

She admitted to having "terrible PCR" afterwards – post-coital remorse, or "post-coital ruth". She didn't know why – after all, Geoffrey was in a state of blissful ignorance.

And she admitted to being in an "itchy" state – waking up "fluttering with imminent risk". She dressed for "an intensely laconic farewell", one that would most likely have taken care of all of her feelings for him. But she found him gone.

"Quietus interruptus," she said. "I went peculiar. I lost my view of myself. I was unembarrassable. Your sheets were cold. Pillow had no smell. You say something," she demanded.

"You were good, too," he said, and paused. "You shouldn't try to make it sound like a free ride. 'Geoffrey will never know and I'm not his chattel so there's nothing to pay.' There are no free rides. You always pay."

"Take it, then, and pay," she demanded. "Be a bastard. Behave badly."

"That's better," he said.

"Betray your benefactor," Ruth urged.

"That's right."

"Corrupt me."

"Put it like that, I might," he said.

"Steal me."

"I want to," Jacob admitted.

"Good. Mess up my life. I'll pay."

"Stupid," he said to himself.

"Don't be frightened," she soothed him.

"And tomorrow – " he broke off.

"I'll pack if you like. If you don't like, I'll stay and deadhead the bougainvillaea. Either way I'll pay."

He kissed her on the lips, not passionately, not embracing her.

"Leave me alone," Jacob said.

"I do know better. To hell with that," she said, falling backwards on the sofa.

"You're really something, Ruth," Jacob said. "I don't know what. He left her alone, and her mind wandered. She imagined herself standing up, shedding her dress, walking naked after him. Before her fantasy could continue, her husband entered.

That was the last time she saw him alive.

When Guthrie had returned with his body, she attacked journalism, asking what it was that Jake died for, asking if he died for headlines like "Sexy or Sexist? – The Case for Intimate Deodorants."

"As far as I'm concerned, Jake died for the product," she said, flinging the newspaper at him.

And, to top it off, Wagner received a message from London.

"There's no paper this week," he said numbly.

She brought out the whisky.

"Did you have a thing for Jake?" Wagner asked.

"No," she replied.

"Just wondered," he said, and sat down at the telex, beginning to type. He stopped for a moment to loosen his tie and light his cigarette. She left the study and walks back to the sitting room.

"Well, it was a very elevated, intellectual sort of thing," she admitted. "I wanted to undress him with my teeth. Oh God, I'm tired as hell and I'm not going to get to sleep."

"Don't you have a pill for that?" he asked.

"There _are_ no pills for that. I want to be hammered out, disjointed, folded up and put away like linen in a drawer." She walked across the room to the whisky bottle and drains the last few drops into her glass. "You can use the phone upstairs if you like."

"I thought you didn't want to be a tart..." Wagner trailed off.

"How do I know until I've tried it? I name this bottle 'Cutty Sark', she said, and broke the bottle against the marble shelf, dropping the remainder into the bin.

She looked at him – he looks like a piano player, sitting there at the telex, cigarette between his lips, whisky on the lid of the machine. She began to sing.

"I like the green grass under my shoes.

What can I lose?

I'm flat! That's that!

I'm all alone when I lower my lamp.

That is why the lady is a tramp..."

Wagner tore a piece of paper out of the machine, interrupting her singing.

"Is that it?" she asked him.

"That's it," he replied. They went up to her bedroom, where she tried to lose herself in him. It didn't work.


End file.
